


Glass

by EmmyJay



Series: Ivory Ascending [2]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assault, Cannibalism, Drugging, F/M, Forced Cannibalism, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Molestation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Touching, Rape/Non-con Elements, assault aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-02 11:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21160745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyJay/pseuds/EmmyJay
Summary: The All-Maudra is summoned to the Emperor's chamber for a private audience.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not to say the first story was anything particularly fun, but—mind the tags, folks.
> 
> **Edit 12 April 2020:** Guys guys guys GUYS GUYS GUYS I have fanart.
> 
> <https://okairagiso.tumblr.com/post/614794805462056960/based-in-a-fanfiction-this-days-i-read-a-good>
> 
> Thank you [OoKairaGisoO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OoKairaGisoO), I'm going to stare at this for hours on end.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the leader of the Gelfling.'_

It was the lie Seladon repeated to herself as she traversed the Castle halls, following the path she'd been told led to the Emperor's private chamber. The Chamberlain had accompanied her much of the way, the same as how he had helped her prepare herself for an audience as best she could, insisted even as she cringed, dodging when she swatted at his hands, _"please, let friend help, yes?"_.

But necessary though his aide had been to locate her destination, Seladon had no true desire for his company on this venture. Perhaps sensing this (or else, as was more likely, having no desire to call the Emperor's attentions on himself) the Chamberlain had ducked away several corridors ago, though not before directing her the final distance.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the voice and will of my people.'_

The Emperor's quarters lay at the end of an otherwise empty corridor, so there was no mistaking which door was his. A lucky thing, Seladon considered, for she doubted she would have found it otherwise—unlike the opulence which gilded the throne room, the door to his private chambers was curiously nondescript, with no markings or adornments which might have differentiated it from the thousands of other doors throughout the Castle.

There was a heavy knocker at the front, and Seladon struck it once, twice; an echoing "enter" came from within. It took some effort to push open the door better suited for creatures larger than Gelfling, but it opened all the same, just enough for her to slip inside before it fell shut behind her once again with a **thud**.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I make the decisions that no one else can.'_

The room inside was smaller than she had expected, though still larger than any other chamber she had seen. The space was lit by a single fireplace, all the candles on the walls extinguished. It cast an eerie glow on the dark, looming figure at its center, standing hunched over a long table strewn with rolls and scraps of parchment.

"Ah," the Emperor's pale eyes found her, seeming to glow in the firelight, "All-Maudra. So _good_ of you to answer my summons."

His tone was conversational; pleasant, even. It reminded her of the time before, when the Lords had ruled them well, ensured that they were safe and comfortable—given them all they could have asked for.

_'Now they take it all back.'_ The balance had been disrupted, leaving the world in turmoil, all because her sister (darling, clever, beloved Brea) could never understand when to leave well enough alone.

(But of course, that was nothing new.)

"My Lord Emperor." Seladon dropped in a delicate curtsy, wings fluttering open behind her as part of the display—a show practiced a hundred-thousand times from the day her wings first bloomed, or longer, since she first stood without Mayrin's assistance. "It is an honour to stand in your presence." She rose, wings folding away, though she kept her head bowed—both a gesture of reverence, and a means to keep from staring too long into the eyes that had haunted her dreams (_nightmares_) this past unum. "How may I serve you?"

Even with her own lowered, Seladon could feel the Emperor's gaze upon her. There was an air of expectancy to it, waiting for her to lift her chin and look at him; perhaps stubbornly, she kept her eyes downturned, watching the flagstones at her feet while the firelight cast faint patterns dancing across their surface. And when the Emperor looked away she felt it lift like a physical weight, releasing a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

The sound of parchment unrolling caught her attention, and she dared a glance upward. The Emperor's attention was focused now on spreading a large roll across the table, spearing bejeweled metal stakes into its corners when it attempted to curl closed once more. The table was just low enough that Seladon could glimpse its surface, and from what she could see of the roll's contents it appeared to be a map. The Emperor did not look at her again, but one taloned hand extended two fingers, beckoning.

"Come closer," he invited with no option for refusal. "We have matters to discuss, you and I."

There was a small stool already at the table, and Seladon stepped easily onto it, nodding her head once in polite thanks for the consideration. From this new position she could see more clearly that it was, indeed, a map laid on the table—of Thra, as she had already guessed. She noticed, with a sharp twist in her gut, that the symbol which would normally indicate the location of Stone-In-The-Wood was obscured by a strange rent in the parchment: clean enough to indicate a blade, but ragged enough to suggest some degree force. _'As though someone plunged a sword through that spot.'_

Forcing her eyes away from that space and all of its implications, Seladon instead let her eyes wander across the rest of the map, following the line of the Black River from its mouth at the Silver Sea, cutting the land neatly in two until it fed into the Swamp of Sog at the very bottom. From the top of her vision she saw the Emperor moving along the table's edge, following him from below her fringe until he passed from her range, and came to rest behind her, a looming, smothering presence at her back. She shuffled forward, attempting to give him space, but the hand that had beckoned her now curled around her hip, pulling her flush against him.

It was one of the same hands that had torn at her before with such violence, whose claws she still bore across her cheek, now touching her so casually. It took all of Seladon's strength to suppress a shudder.

"The Scientist informs me that he has nearly completed the draining of all the Stonewood Gelfling." The Emperor's tone was curt, utterly unaffected by the words he spoke. Even now, after an unum of consideration, Seladon could barely wrap her head around how easily he—how _all_ of the Lords—admitted to the draining of Gelfling. _'The world has turned so wrong, Mother.'_ "It will not be long before our stores run dry; we would do well to move before then, to prevent any shortage." A single claw tapped a heartbeat against her hip, thoughtful in its tattoo.

"The time has come to select the next clan for culling."

Seladon's eyes fluttered shut; she inhaled deeply through her nose, steeling herself as Mayrin had refused to. _'Save the many by sacrificing a few.'_

"I understand, My Lord Emperor," she said. "What I do not understand is: why am I here?"

The talons at her hip curled into the bone there, the one that seemed to protrude more and more each day, and the Emperor pulled her impossibly closer, until his dark robes fluttered against her sides. He bent to her level, breath rancid and hot over her shoulder; the side of his beak nuzzled her cheek, its metal ornamentation cold against her skin, but that was not what made Seladon jump. Rather it was the smell that emanated from it—the sort one felt physically in the back of their throat, sharp and overpowering, at surface the stench of old meat gone foul. And yet it woke some ancient, half-forgotten instinct in Seladon that had her every sense screaming at her to _run_.

It was the same smell she had tasted in the air over fields gone withered and dead, their ground trampled by animals gone mad.

"Because you are the All-Maudra," he answered, each word another warm breath against her. "And as All-Maudra, it is your right to decide the fate of all those under your, ah, _protection_." The hand on her hip slithered upward, curving around her belly, over her front, nearly intimate in its caress even as its long talons came to rest lightly around her throat.

"So—give me a name."

The breath that caught in Seladon's throat had only somewhat to do with the threatening touch landing there.

"My Lord Emperor," she began, stumbling over the words—hating how they lodged in her throat. "I..._thank_ you, for your consideration. But surely it is not my place to **dare** assume to..._advise_ you on such an important—"

"I disagree," he cut her off, one talon stroking the fluttering pulse along the side of her neck. "They are your people, after all. It is your right as leader of all Gelfling."

The fingers flexed, the first hint of pressure against her windpipe, "now give me a _name_."

Seladon's eyes flew across the map—the Coast, the Sog, the Black River that cut it all in half—fighting against the rising panic in her chest. _'I am the All-Maudra. I make the decisions that no one else can.'_ Except she couldn't, how could she, how did one choose such a thing? "Please, My Lord Emperor, there is no need—"

The hand around her throat tightened, squeezing until spots danced in front of her vision. "A **name**."

By reflex Seladon's hands flew to the strangling grip, nails clawing at the flesh there. But the Emperor didn't so much as flinch, his hold never wavering, waiting stonily for the answer he demanded. Her legs kicked, an action as pointless as her clawing, and one which served only to knock the stool out from under her flailing feet, leaving her weight wholly supported by the Emperor's grip—gasping like a landed Hooyim, her eyes bulging from her skull.

_'I'm going to die here.'_

The thought came wildly, barely comprehensible through the dark encroaching on the edges of her consciousness. She had known it, perhaps, the moment the Chamberlain had relayed the Emperor's summons—or even earlier, when the Emperor had first allowed her to live, not dragging her off to be drained with the Gelfling of Stone-In-The-Wood. She saw her crown shattered on the throne room floor, felt the merciless claws of her Lords, heard their jeers and laughter. And through it all another voice, dripping thickly with contempt.

_"It is the rest of you who are lost."_

"The Drenchen!" The words barely escaped past the grip on her throat, tight and choked and thick with terror. "Take the Drenchen clan!"

It all fell away in a moment, the pressure on her windpipe gone as though it had never been, and without it holding her up Seladon dropped heavily to the floor, mercifully catching herself on the table's edge to keep from collapsing, though the impact of her feet on stone still sent pain ricketing up her shins. The Emperor stepped back and away, his attentions turning elsewhere; she could not even find the strength to be relieved by his retreat.

"The Drenchen, then," he agreed. "I will inform the General; our forces will march to the Sog at first light. They will fight, of course." A thoughtful sound, the _tap_ of talons on wood. "But then—so did the Stonewood."

Still at the table, Seladon tried to hide how deeply she gasped, clutching its edges to keep herself upright. Behind her, she could hear the Emperor tinkering with something, the gentle _clink, clink_ of glass echoing in the quiet.

"You have done well, All-Maudra," he said, and she could tell by the sound of his voice that he had turned to her once again. "I admit, I had my doubts when the Chamberlain beseeched me to make use of you. Yet you have proven yourself..._most_ interesting."

The shuffle of robes across the floor, and then he was at her back again, though not quite the suffocating presence of before. A single talon ran between her wings, along the length of her spine; moved to the base of her skull, stroking the silvery hairs there—a comforting touch from a concerned lover on a soft morning. She turned to see him watching her carefully, and caught the glint of some twisted satisfaction in his eyes.

"You must be thirsty." From behind him he drew a vial already uncorked, contents swirling in the glass. "Here—drink."

It crossed Seladon's mind to refuse, but the vial was already pushed into her hand, the Emperor guiding it to her lips. The liquid was silvery in colour, and glowed fiercely in the dimness of the room. It tasted like sparks on her tongue, like something alive fighting her as she swallowed, biting and clawing as it ran down her throat. Something precious; something stolen.

Essence. That was what they called it: the Essence of Gelfling. Of the Stonewood Clan. Of Maudra Fara. As if summoned by her name, the Stonewood Maudra's face loomed to the forefront of Seladon's mind: screaming, thrashing, shouting for her life even as it was dragged from her into nothing. Into something. Into the vial.

_'This is Maudra Fara.'_

Seladon screamed, then, as much as she could against the glass rim, and tried to pull away, but the Emperor's hand at the base of her skull held her roughly in place, talons now tangling in her hair to wrench her head back. With his other hand he pressed the vial back to her lips, tilting it to let the thick liquid pour into her mouth. She coughed, choking on the silvery remnants of a life so vibrantly lived, a ferocity unmatched, fighting to the very last. And when it was over the vial was retracted, only to be replaced by the Emperor's palm—cold, stinking of death and decay and something darker than she could ever imagine—clamping over her mouth, holding in all that she had consumed.

"Swallow."

She swallowed.

"Do not waste it."

She fought there urge to retch.

"That's a good Gelfling."

This time when the Emperor released her Seladon **did** collapse, her head bouncing against the flagstone with an awful _crack_. The pain was barely noticeable, overshadowed by the twisting in her stomach, curling outward into her limbs while her mind fogged over in a way that was familiar yet utterly strange. Like dreamfasting, but nothing like it—not sharing memories but consuming them, ripping them away with violence. A perversion of something sacred, an act of trust betrayed. She looked up with Fara's eyes and saw the Emperor standing above her, wearing the same hungry expression she had seen in the throne room.

"How does it taste?" he asked, voice coming as though through a veil.

Seladon opened her mouth, to answer or to scream. It didn't matter—no sound came out.

"Fascinating."

The world spun, pitched sideways, her body floating through the air. Something soft at her back (she was lying down) slippery against her skin (what had happened to her dress?). There was a second vial of the stuff (who was it now?) and the Emperor was pouring it onto her, letting it pool in the hollow of her throat, her collar, trailing between her breasts (the Black River cleaving her in half). He chased the rivulets with his tongue, teeth scraping the mounds and valleys of her body as they passed under him—each one a dim light of pain in the yawning chasm of her mind, lost amid the screams of a Gelfling taken from Thra.

"I can't," the words came at last, eyes wild and unfocused on the dead and dying faces. "Please, my Lord—_help me_—"

The empty vial shattering somewhere far away. Her breaths ragged and sobbing. Trenches on her thighs where his talons dug them open.

_Silver_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The waking afterward is far from pleasant.

Consciousness came back to Seladon much like wandering through fog: with every step the area around her grew clearer, yet still the way forward did not open. It was not until she had stumbled for hours, face stained with tears and breath thick with desperation, that she finally glimpsed something in the distance, beyond the clouded barrier—a landmark to run toward, grab for, cling to until she sobbed.

Only to find that she had run from one nightmare into the arms of another.

The first thing she registered was pain, streaking across her body in a range of depth and severity. She groaned softly, shifting where she lay (bed, she was in a bed) and every movement called attention to new injuries, deeper and colder and not wholly physical. Her eyes fluttered open, and something red and unwelcome jumped to her side

"Oh, Beloved Seladon!" The Chamberlain's voice reached her, comfortless in its sound. "At last friend is awake! Oh, such relief, such joy!"

She was no longer in the Emperor's chamber. Instead, the ceiling of her own room greeted her, the cracks and lines between its stones welcome and familiar. "How long...?"

"Second Brother rises," The Chamberlain's weight settled onto the bed by her feet. He fussed over the blanket there. "Seladon has slept for some time. Missed breakfast!"

Breakfast. The thought of food made her stomach growl, but at the same time the thought of eating only recalled the sensation of Essence sliding down her throat. _'I could not eat. Not now.'_ Not while she could still feel Maudra Fara spinning in her head.

Stiffly, Seladon pushed herself to sitting, clutching at the blanket draped over her when it began to slip. She was naked beneath it, her face burning at the realisation, and she quickly took stock of every part of her body, every injury she could tell from feel alone. Her arms prickled and burned; her chest flared sharply; her legs throbbed. All of that to say nothing of the pounding in her skull, still echoing with screams.

"Emperor called skekSil to his chambers to retrieve Seladon," the Chamberlain continued. "Friend was delirious, mumbling and sobbing. Carried you here, yes? Fell into sleep after some hours, slept soundly since. Good rest?"

No, Seladon wanted to say—a "good rest" would not have left her body sore with exhaustion, though truth be told, that was only one ache atop countless others. Not waiting (or not caring enough to wait) for an answer the Chamberlain leaned in, head tilting to the side in curiosity. "What _did_ Emperor want with Friend, hmm?"

He seemed far too interested for Seladon's comfort, and she recalled the Emperor's praise, his mention of the Chamberlain's suggestion. On instinct she clutched the blanket tighter, eyes fixed on her own clenched fists—wishing desperately that she could tuck it around and over herself like a chrysalis, rather than merely hold it like a flimsy shield before her.

"He wanted me," she said after a pause, "to choose the next clan for—for draining."

The Chamberlain _hmm_ed amicably. "Drenchen, yes," he affirmed. "General has already left, gone with forces to Sog." He, like the Emperor, spoke so easily of draining Gelfling—as though it were nothing, merely another step in a daily routine. He tugged expectantly at the blanket, thankfully not enough to pull it from her. "What else?"

Seladon swallowed.

"He...gave me a vial." The words were difficult to force past the lump in her throat. "It was from the Stonewood clan. Essence."

A bolt of movement, and her eyes flew to the Chamberlain. His eyes met hers, and his expression fell quickly into his usual look of innocence, but for half a second she saw something else there: a glimpse of raw, naked surprise, tinged with—anger?

"He permitted me the...grand honour of its consumption." The smell of death on his palm as he forced her head back, the cold trickle of stolen life down her throat. "He wished to know how I enjoyed the taste." An answer never given, a thousand screams in her head. "And then he—"

The words stuck, refusing to come out. The Chamberlain leaned toward her once more, his eyes wide in undisguised interest.

"Hmm?" He stroked her calf through the blanket, a touch like one might use to soothe a distressed animal. It made Seladon shiver, though not with cold. "And then Emperor...what? Please, you tell."

Seladon's mouth opened to answer; closed; opened again. The memory thickened in her throat, threatening to strangle her.

"He—"

Teeth and claws scratching her body, a thick tongue caressing her flesh—

"He—"

_Trap it's a trap never forget_—

"...he **hurt** me."

She did not pretty the words, dressing them in layers of platitudes as she normally might have, but the Chamberlain looked unsurprised regardless. She watched him consider her words; watched his eyes slide the length of her throat, over her collar, where her skin disappeared beneath her covering.

"Show me."

Now he did grasp at the blanket, and Seladon felt terror surge in her like a wild animal.

_'No!'_

She fought, clutching tighter at her barrier, her one protection, and the Chamberlain fell to placating whimpers, crooning words of might-have-been-comfort (_"please, show skekSil, am friend, will help, yes, please?"_) until she relented and let the blanket fall away, leaving her bared and defenseless once again.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the leader of the Gelfling.'_

The Chamberlain clambered fully onto the bed, balancing over her, and one of his hands pressed against her shoulder, pushing her to lie back; her hair spread about her head on the pillow like a silver crown, _'the only one I shall ever again wear.'_ The other hand slipped over her breasts, then lower, its owner ignoring how she flinched, _hmm_ing and _ahh_ing over the marks there. In the otherwise quiet Seladon heard a curious sound coming from the floor below her bed, like scuttling, numerous limbs moving quickly across the stone. When the Chamberlain pushed her thighs apart to kneel between them, talons creeping to investigate the flesh, she let her eyes flutter closed, focusing on the dark behind her eyelids.

_'I am the All-Maudra. I am the voice and will of my people.'_

"I see, I see." The Chamberlain's prying talons slipped away, and she released her breath in a long, shaking exhale. "Is not so bad, hmm? Already stopped bleeding! Should heal nicely, yes?"

A short, sharp huff of air that might have tried to be a laugh escaped Seladon. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, staring down the length of her own body at the Lord still crouched between her knees.

"He **hurt** me," she repeated, a note of desperation entering her voice. The Chamberlain eyed her head-to-toe again, lingering too long on every scratch and mark.

"Ah, hmm, yes, this happens," he cooed. "Skeksis are not soft creatures. Many edges, teeth and claws—so sharp, so _pointy_." He tapped a talon against one of the gouges on her thigh to demonstrate, and Seladon flinched away before she could stop herself. "Will bring balms again, ointments for healing. Friend Seladon will be good as new!"

_'Will I?'_ Seladon somehow doubted that balms and ointments would erase the taste of Maudra Fara on her tongue, or the sound of Gelfling screams swarming her thoughts. Nor would healing the marks he left erase the memory of the Emperor above her with hungry eyes, or the cold realisation that his monstrous visage was no apparition brought on by the effects of Essence coursing through her.

_'To think I once called him fair.'_

Perhaps fortunately, the Chamberlain mistook her sullen silence for quiet contemplation; or else more likely he knew her thoughts, and simply cared nothing for them. 

"skekSil will speak to Emperor on Seladon's behalf," he said after a time, ducking his head in an attempt to meet her eyes; she stubbornly kept her gaze fixed downward. "Cannot promise Emperor will listen, but—perhaps can convince him to be more gentle with friend next time, hmm?"

Seladon's throat felt suddenly very dry. "Next time?"

"Oh, yes!" There was far too much excitement in the Chamberlain's tone, his hands clapping together in delight. "Emperor is most pleased. Already in better mood this morning! Seladon has done well, hmm?"

_Well_. That was one way of putting it, Seladon supposed. She let her elbows give, dropping her back onto the bed, limp as grass. She inhaled, breath shaking, and felt the sting of tears prick at the corners of her eyes; a single sob and the Chamberlain fell upon her, fussing and crooning.

"Why so glum?" he questioned. "Beloved Seladon has done well, yes? Has proven worth to Emperor, to Skeksis! And friend of Chamberlain—soon, both will have respect we deserve!" A soft nip to her temple, beak nuzzling into her hair. "That is not cause for sadness, hmm?"

The only answer that Seladon could give was another sob, and apparently that was enough. The Chamberlain scooped one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and shifted them both so she lay sideways across his lap, curled tightly against his chest. When she trembled like a leaf he drew up the blanket, tucking it snugly around her until she was swaddled like a newborn. "There," he murmured, pleased with himself, "nice and warm."

Except Seladon was not warm. And she wasn't sure she would ever be warm again.


End file.
